[RelentlessImp]

Gaming, as it stands today, is pretty advanced. Uncanny Valley is fact, not fiction, and as graphics keep improving, it'll become a thing of the past. What happens when graphics are indistinguishable from reality? We're starting to see some of that now. Kinect, Playstation Move, Wii... right now, there's a big push for alternative control schemes for games.

Shadowrun Core talks a little about this - Miracle Shooter and whatnot - where the world around you becomes your game world, with AR overlays giving you better-than-reality settings in which to play in. Where that store over there becomes a spawn point for trash mobs, and you raid the lobby of the hotel over here to fight the Big Bad, a 'chromed out demon.

But that's pretty much all it says. And as a prolific gamer myself (tabletop, video), I find myself extrapolating to the new and unheard of levels that 2072's technology can bring to a game.

Control Schemes
By 2072, the controller is gone. Kaput. You, simply put, are the controller. Or maybe just your mind. With AR games, with a small investment into Biofeedback Clothing, some AR gloves, some good goggles with Image Link (glasses are too prone to falling off and contact lenses don't give an appropriate field of view), some earbuds, and a decent System Commlink, the world around you becomes a literal playground.

But what games do people of 2072 play? Here are some possibilities:

Pong 2072/2100
Everyone knows Pong. It's a fraggin' classic. It's survived 100 years and people still talk about it. Hell, it even got some media attention just this year when 2072 and 2100 were released - whoever had the copyright wised up to have some serious creds cashed in on a little update on 2072. He didn't expect the redesign team to come up with 2100, though. He even gave them a generous (2%) cut on the gross.

Pong 2072 is your classic Pong, only with an AR overlay and the ability to move the paddle with minute twitches of your finger. Careful, the sensitivity's pretty high, don't go slamming at it. It's also multiplayer, and includes a WiFi system that allows you to interface with other people playing nearby and challenge them to a match. Default settings are Best of 5, but can be changed before the match begins.

Pong 2100 is a whole different game. This one requires cold or hot sim, but if you're going in cold you're not going to be doing much good. You're just too slow. Pong 2100 takes place in a polyhedron, requiring a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 20 players. Each player is assigned a paddle and a side, and are given 360 degree movement so they can dart across the board. Why is this important?

20 balls are dropped into the ring when the game begins. At first, these balls travel on linear paths between two opposing sides, two to each line. When a player goes out, however, the stakes go up; their side is assigned to the player closest to it, and their ball enters the "lane" of the person who just acquired the side.

As more players are eliminated, the game becomes more and more hectic as more balls are spread between less players. When you get down to two, each player is covering ten sides and trying to stop 20 balls from blasting through. The last man standing wins. Good luck doing that in cold sim, chummer.

Pong 2100 also comes with a "spectator mode", both Matrix and local. In the Matrix, the spectator watches from outside the polyhedron, able to spin it any which way they want. In local, the game overlay can be fed into a holographic trideo projector, which allows others to see the action without having to be in the Matrix.


>>>>>[If you're interested and in Seattle, stop by the Antique Room. It's a hacker hangout, and there's at least one Pong 2072 tournament every night (with some pretty antique bass & drum music to accompany that's pretty good) and a Pong 2100 tournament right after for the losers.]<<<<<
 --Asterisk (20:32:11/10-03-2072)

>>>>>[Ugh, no thanks. I've been there. They don't like people who have bionodes.]<<<<<
     -- Zipline (20:35:51/10-03-2072)

>>>>>[Maybe if you drekheads stopped using faux-scientific terms like bionodes, we'd have more respect for you.]<<<<<
     -- Bluescreen Null Void (01:05:41/10-04-2072)


Hot Sim Games
So what are hot sim games? Hacker games. Games meant to be played in full-bore, safeties off, "you're gonna feel that" hot VR. I hope you've got a good biofeedback filter.

Hot sim games typically allow a hacker to utilize everything at their disposal. It doesn't matter if that Attack program's outdated, or if you've got a bad Armor program. These things are usually coded pretty damned well; all you gotta do is submit the specs of your program (not the actual code - don't freak out now) and its icon and the game handles the rest.

These are usually full-on persistent virtual worlds (think MMOs from the old days) with classic character progression. The only difference is that you are... well, you. Your icon, your attack programs, all translated into proper code for the game to process and handle and mesh with the world. These games are free, but with one drawback: They require you to have an up-to-date (no less than a month old) Biofeedback Program before they let you in. They want you to feel the game world; they don't want you to die.

Examples: World of Quests '90, Neurofeed, Alyx

>>>>>[They've either got some talented coders or a technomancer on the production team for World of Quests '90. They handled my Persona and complex forms and were even able to parse streaming for the ones I didn't have. Of course, my internal biofeedback filter isn't great... I'm still trying to shake off my migraine from tanking from my raid day before yesterday. My sprites aren't talking to me after that after-party, either...]<<<<<
     -- Zipline (20:36:30/10-03-2072)


Cold Sim Games
Cold sim games are much like hotsim games, but I don't know a single codeslinger that runs cold sim. Production qualities tend to be quite a bit lower than hot sim games, with a new one coming out every month; I guess when you're not expecting to smell, hear, and taste the world, people feel like they can slack off. Graphics are muted, less realistic, and typically have shoddier animation and sound effects. But you are free from that pesky problem of possibly getting killed for real in a hot sim game, so that's something. Still, if you're looking for a no-frills game to practice your shooting in, you can't go wrong with a few deathmatch arenas in Slug of Honor.

Examples: Perfection, Slugs of Honor, Masters of Destiny

AR Games
AR games are what most gamers play these days. With blockbusters on the market like Miracle Shooter getting so much attention in the media, can you really blame them? While hotsim and coldsim games are a kind of geek cred (even knowing about them gets you a bit of attention among certain social circles), AR games are much more public and much more accessible. With an AR game, your image link, sound system, some biofeedback clothes, and some AR gloves, the real world becomes a game for you.

Things spawn out of nearby buildings, firing at you, the hotel lobby becomes a dungeon or max-sec prison, and so on. The only real problems I've ever seen with AR is - what happens when the person buys into it too much? With a hotsim game, yeah, you might wake up with a headache... but your meat body's not actually doing anything. So if you dive for cover behind that banister, only to find out it's a balcony to keep drekheads from falling onto the train tracks fifty meters down... well. Splat.

I don't have a lot of respect for AR games. They're public, and noisy, and completely destroy your sense of situational awareness for the real world. I guess if you're a corp goon, or the kid of one, these things might be safe to play. Maybe. I wouldn't let anyone I know use one. I'd rather buy my teammates the cold sim package myself and let them practice shooting in Slugs of Honor, personally.


>>>>>[He's not kidding. A former teammate of mine was a huge fan of Miracle Shooter. He was a great street sam, a big bulky troll that could punch through a building's (internal) wall if he wanted to. Unfortunately, he pretty much lived in Miracle Shooter when not on a job. I hacked the logs off his own commlink after; seems he was chasing a couple of PvPers to gun them down for stealing his kills. They led him onto the monorail tracks just as the 20:15 was passing by. Splat went the troll, and nobody in the train even noticed. I made sure the little bastards that did it knew that I wasn't appreciative of their little 'sport'. Rest in peace, Gleeker.]<<<<<
     -- Maiketta (15:41:42/10-05-2072)

>>>>>[Gleeker's dead? I hope you made sure they paid, Mai. Gonna miss the big ol' dumbass.]<<<<<
     -- Asterisk (16:16:21/10-05-2072)

[Aria]

My take on a hotSIM game world from the 2072 thread on DS:

<<<[Matrix Node: SEAѤ67-∑2: The Citadel]

The massive doors open with a hiss of gasses and a waft of pearlescent steam. The gatekeeper steps aside to let you past. You pass down a statue lined hallway, each one three times taller than a troll, depicting personalities from the game world perhaps? A broad sweep of steps leads you down and through another set of gargantuan doors that whisper aside at the lightest of touches. Inside is an impossibly large room dominated by a swirling planar orrery suspended in light. Swirling vapour trails project out to portals that surround the outer walls of the chamber and at each there are a gathering of avatars coming and going. The persona icons are wildly varied and fill the hall, chatting, rubber necking or on some other mysterious mission relating to the game.

A game agent, an icon you had initially taken for another piece of statuesque architecture, steps down from its alcove and approaches you. The ancient marble of its surface now ripples with life

“XXX, this is your first time in the Citadel. Welcome to the Gathering Hall…from here you can go anywhere that your imagination can conceive, and many places that it cannot. Each portal will take you to a different game sphere, most can be reached from here, some only from within another sphere. From your profile I suggest the Gardens might suit you for an initial look at what we can offer but you can return here at will and pick any sphere. Ask and information will be made available to you…”

Time to play!>>>

The Citadel Game Zone is the best new game of 2072. So that it potentially appeals to everyone  it has multiple realms inside it (with portals between them) that allow you to play in a high fantasy genre or move to a space theme or a cyberpunk one as you choose (or any other type that you come up with…). You can play solo or in groups and PvP is perfectly acceptable as there is no risk to real characters.  Gamers are given the opportunity to write their own worlds and the winners get to see them realised on the Citadel servers.

Notional Rules
[spoiler]

Skill: Computer or knowledge ‘Matrix Games’ used to play it legally. Hacking can be substituted if you want to cheat

Program: When you buy (pirated copies available) the game (50¥) you get a total of 20D that have to be split up over the following 5 stats, max is 6 min is 1:

•Attack skill [covers ranged and melee attacks, spells etc]
•Attack strength [as above]
•Defence skill [for dodging all incoming attacks]
•Toughness [for then resisting incoming attacks]
•Technical skill [covers lock picking, scroll reading, anything else that gets dreamed up…]

That should cover the broad list of likely actions. When I’m feeling braver I may add in some adept like abilities that can be gained during game play as advancement incentives.

I haven’t yet considered what the in-game objectives might be, most MMOs seem to be about levelling your character up but I think something more shadowrunny might be better here?!? I might steal the idea of ‘NewCap City’ from the Caprica series and have the objective obscure – you just need to live the game…or survive it 

[/spoiler]

[Mirikon]

A Cold Sim game:

TROGDOR'S REVENGE!

I don't know where this thing came from, or who wrote it. The site says that it is an homage to some way back free-to-play game made back before the first Crash. Honestly, I don't know, 'cuz I couldn't find more than a couple images around the 'trix that mentioned the original. All I know is that the hack who programmed this made the main character look like Ghostwalker. Might be why the game was released without the programmer's name on it.

For those of you who've never played, here's how it runs. You're running around Denver, squishing Azzies and trying to avoid little people with swords and assault cannons. You squish enough Azzies, and then you start breathing fire at the buildings and people trying to kill you. After you burn enough buildings, the game resets at the next difficulty level, until you eventually get geeked by the Azzies, and bloody letters come up saying drek like "You got sworded!" No lie.